issue nineteen: love is like a religion (and you are the foremost believer)
trigger warnings: homophobia, religious intolerance
disclaimer: the author, who is culturally orthodox christian, speaks from her experience.
symptomatic of queer poetry is a sense of religious guilt: a speaker who apologizes for their own attraction, who begs the listener for absolution or rejects the idea that they must absolved. religion informs the structure of the poem. if love is a sin, queer people see themselves as heretics. if love is a sin, queer people fear they will burn in hell. imagery of guilt is so endemic of queer art that any mention of a love associated with shame sends up smoke signals. religious doctrine and dogma is rewritten, subverted, and internalized by the very people it hurts most. it is perhaps part of the appeal of writing about this kind of guilt to take the holiness which was denied you and recreate it in your art, or to commit some exorcism by the process of creation, or, perhaps most selflessly, extending a hand to those who might feel the same, allowing them self-recognition through art that queer people are so often denied.
the obligation to god at your own expense imposed by dominant religious ideology is more unnatural than any queer desire could aspire to be. consider raskolnikov of dostoyevsky’s crime and punishment. in the absence of societal punishment for his actions, he is wracked by guilt over ending another person’s life. in the absence of religious structures that condemn queer youth for their sexuality, equivalent guilt would not exist. there is an artificiality associated with religious disapproval. the idea that a benevolent god who created the humanity in his image would look down on the concept of same-sex attraction is more man-made than it is divine. it is laughable, however, the man-made imposition of religion makes its consequences indelible.
queer artists elevate their lovers above god as a means to reclaim harmful iconography. her hand was invented before god was, before anything existed, wrote caitlyn siehl. long before the hegemony of the christian church, sappho made similar claim: in the crooks of your body, i find my religion. thus the poem becomes a confessional; a means to change the script. you say love is greater than god. you say love is god itself. and in doing do, you aim to make a structure which hurt you part of that which heals you. i find it absurd to argue that queer christians have strayed from their path or lost their god. it takes an incredible amount of devotion to pray when religious figures unilaterally tell you that there is no one looking out for you. it takes an incredible amount of strength to find religion amidst bigotry.
the vehicle of religious guilt is often the family. your acknowledgement of your homosexuality feels like a disappointment to god, but more importantly, your father. in homophobic or stratified communities, coming out means alienation from your home, your church, and the people around you. this choice offers no salvation: live as you are and be damned, or hide yourself while knowing that the people around you wouldn’t accept the truth. especially in immigrant homes, where religion is often the last remnant of the old country (the one your parents were forced to leave by war or famine or economic crisis) homosexuality feels like a betrayal of god. you might know otherwise. you might have other communities: friends or classmates who are as comfortable with your queerness as they are their own. but when you go home at the end of the day, it still feels like god hates you, and so does your father.
identifying your difference makes it real. saying you’re gay is worse than gravitating towards queer media, worse than playing hayley kiyoko on the communal speaker, worse than expressing sympathy for a victim of a hate crime. any believer knows that saying it makes it real: this is the basis of prayer. and i would suggest that this is where the guilt stems from, this is where the issue lies, this is where you become judas, walking away from family dinner.
i think it’s interesting to discuss how this social consequence is made manifest in art. poetry is a specific example of this because of its unique capacity to crystallize the moment of realization. whether that is the first moment you saw a girl and realized you loved her, the first time you walked through the doors of a church and felt your congregation shy away from you, the first time your mother looked away from you after you came out. shame is a product of your environment and guilt is the internal consequence. art, however, is a reclamation of the pain, a bridge built out of the darkness.
richard siken, who is as beloved among casual poetry readers as he is by his peers, writes that his lover touches him like a prayer for which no words exist. and if there is no prayer for queer desire, nothing that elevates it to the level of god, why can’t we write it?